THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 18, 1995 TAG: 9507180263
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERRI WILLIAMS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Long : 126 lines
The scene has played twice recently before the City Council.
Carrie Davis, standing at about 5 feet and armed with a plan and a request, appears tiny in the dimly lit council chambers.
In measured tones, she listed contributors who've helped her so far. There are Oak Grove Baptist Church, which has given $1,425; Christ Episcopal Church, $500; and many others who have provided money and furnishings.
But what she still needs, she says, is $50,000 to start her Grace Home for Children, an emergency shelter for abused and neglected children. She's asking the City Council to appropriate Community Development Block Grant money to make her dream become reality.
Rewind to a City Council session just weeks ago.
Karyn Cook, towering over a lectern, begs the council for rezoning so she and her husband can turn their two-story, Victorian duplex into an emergency shelter for abused and neglected children.
Davis and Cook have never met, yet they're united by a common mission to get an emergency shelter to the area. Social-services officials agree - an emergency shelter helps the healing begin sooner.
There is no emergency shelter for abused and neglected children here or anywhere in Hampton Roads. Virginia Beach has the only formal emergency shelter, and it serves teenage boys and girls, according to the Virginia Department of Social Services in Richmond.
Hampton Roads cities have shelters for the homeless and for battered women and their children, crisis intervention homes for juvenile delinquents who have been detained, and non-structured care places where children can be housed under supervised care.
A beaten or neglected child would be placed with licensed foster parents. And that, says Betty Bryan of The Child Abuse Center in Norfolk, doesn't always provide the best match.
The private, non-profit center, which assesses medical and psychological needs of abused children, has created a task force to build a regional emergency assessment center for all of Hampton Roads. Its roles would include better matching foster parents and children with special needs.
Sometimes when children are permanently placed with new parents, sibling groups would be separated. An emergency center would allow that child to get psychological treatment before such a transition.
``There is an established need,'' says Bobby Ralph, director of the Suffolk Department of Social Services. ``We're always taking care of the children as the emergency arrives, but we'd like more options.''
Davis and Cook are trying to create those options.
Davis, 45, grew up around children. Her parents ran a day care center in Rock Hill, S.C., and there were always parents who dropped off the little ones. But Davis's parents took it a step further: They helped single moms with their babies, and they offered advice.
``Our house was just an open door for children,'' says Davis, who has a 23-year-old son.
That type of service to kids carried over in Davis' life.
Six years ago, her husband, Carlton, was driving in Chuckatuck, a northern Suffolk community, when he spotted a house at 5464 Godwin Blvd. They bought it with the intent to rent it, but Carrie Davis had a change of heart.
Newspaper and television stories about abused and neglected children grabbed her heart and her attention. A registered nurse and nursing instructor at Obici Hospital, Davis also dealt daily with unwed teen moms. She decided to turn the house into Grace Home for Children.
``I feel as a society we're neglecting our children,'' Davis says. ``People are very removed from the problems of others. Yet what they fail to understand is that that abused and neglected child becomes the juvenile delinquent, who has no concern about robbing or murdering someone.''
Emergency care shelters - staffed by house parents and a director with professional experience in child care - are better for abused kids, she says.
Foster homes are on the decline, she says.
In Suffolk, 114 children were in foster care last year, Ralph said. As of June 1995, 121 kids were in foster care, so there is a need to ``recruit'' more parents, Ralph said. Foster parents number from 60 to 100 per Hampton Roads city.
Bryan blames the decline on changing lifestyles and minimal state reimbursement to foster parents.
Davis says a group home offers ``a more natural environment. It's better for the child psychologically to be in a family environment.''
She hopes to house eight children, ages 4 to 17, in the five-bedroom house. They would be placed by Social Services for up to 60 days or until a suitable foster parent was found or the child returned home.
The drive to open the shelter hasn't been easy.
``When I started this project, I saw the world through rose-tinted glasses,'' Davis says. ``It's not that way. I didn't know it would take six years.''
Karyn and Dana Cook got a vision to help children after they were saved by God.
Dana, 37, a licensed child counselor; and Karyn, 36, a registered nurse, met 10 years ago in Baltimore. They realized they needed to devote their lives to Christ after assessing their lifestyle.
The Cooks couldn't have children of their own, so they opted to do the next best thing.
They joined a church and helped with its home for unwed mothers. Later, they became foster parents.
When they moved to Suffolk eight years ago, they continued to help children, but it proved difficult. They took in several foster children with behavioral problems. Neighbors in Hall Place said the children were disruptive and unruly and the Cooks were forced to turn over some of the kids to Social Services.
``It was heartbreaking,'' Dana Cook said. ``Suddenly you come up with something you can't control.''
They decided that the next time they cared for children, it would be in a house staffed with professionals to match kids for permanent placement.
But it proved equally difficult to get their proposed Lambs Nest off the ground; there was little support.
Lambs Nest, to have been housed in their duplex in Hall Place, would have sheltered eight children, ages 4 to 10. But the Hall Place Association protested, arguing that the Cooks no longer lived there and that they didn't want the possibility of abusive parents coming to the community.
The Planning Commission recommended against the plan, and City Council denied rezoning.
The Cooks are looking into other sites that are already zoned for a shelter. Their church, Cypress Chapel Christian Church, is helping in their efforts.
``It was never us against them,'' Dana Cook said. ``Obviously this (Hall Place) was not the right place. Sometimes we move too fast for God.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Carrie Davis, 45, dreams of helping abused and neglected children
KEYWORDS: EMERGENCY SHELTER ABUSED CHILDREN by CNB